Fence spawns border dispute in ‘Native Gardens’

CHICAGO – Do good fences makes good neighbors?

Robert Frost had doubts about that, and so does playwright Karen Zacarías, whose “Native Gardens” opened over the weekend at Victory Gardens Theater, in a 90-minute production being directed by Marti Lyons.

As things get under way, a young Latinx couple — Tania (Paloma Nozicka) and Pablo (Gabriel Ruiz) — have moved into an old and stately Washington neighborhood alongside Frank (Patrick Clear) and Virginia (Janet Ulrich Brooks), an older white couple.

The Del Valles are moving on up. Tania is finishing a doctoral dissertation and about to have a baby. Pablo is on the cusp of making partner at a prestigious Washington law firm — all of whose members are scheduled to descend upon his shabby backyard for a Saturday barbecue.

Hoping to spruce things up before their big party, the Del Valles hit on the idea of removing the nasty chain-link fence dividing their yard from the Butleys’ yard.

Frank and Virginia are thrilled, until learning that the actual property line — as well as the contemplated placement of the Del Valles’ new fence — will eat up two feet of their yard, including Frank’s prized, meticulously tended flower garden. Border war ensues, as initially friendly neighbors morph into mortal enemies. Weapon of choice: acorns.

The ensuing fracas calls to mind Yasmina Reza’s “God of Carnage,” with similarly shifting alliances as fault lines involving class and gender complicate the primary divide along lines of race and age.

But while the types presented here are comparably broad — “Native Gardens” tilts toward farce — Zacarías invokes bigger, seemingly intractable social issues at the core of our current debate about who we are. It’s no accident that Tania’s dissertation involves the meaning of identity.

Does it matter that the Butleys have worked the land and made it grow when it isn’t even theirs? If they must cede privileges and property they’ve only been borrowing, what happens to their sweat equity? Is a dominant white population willing to learn some history about how and why it took charge — while accommodating others clamoring for longdenied rights?

All of which could play as a preachy screed if Zacarías weren’t both funny and fair; it’s important in a play like this that we empathize with both sides.

Blinded by their conviction that they’re right, progressives have a bad habit of caricaturing their opponents as benighted racist rednecks; such elitist thinking and the resulting populist backlash go a long way toward explaining what happened last November.

There’s a bit of that in “Native Gardens,” as Zacarías occasionally reduces her types to cartoon caricatures; Frank in particular can be hard to take seriously.

But Zacarías assigns flaws to everyone. Hence when Pablo and Tania get on their high horse, filled with the self-righteous assurance of the untested young, we’re apt to feel sympathy for the Butleys. Tania may be right when she lectures insecticide-loving Frank about the value of bugs and weeds. But she comes across here as an insensitive killjoy; our heart goes out to him.

My own heart was captured by the reliably excellent Brooks, offering a fine portrait featuring a working-class woman of a certain age who has fought prejudice of her own to become who she is. Virginia is an engineer working for a major defense contractor, having earned her stripes during a time when women working in such firms were usually typing memos rather than writing them.

She’s wrong about a lot of things. But even amid the laughter in this often lighthearted play, Brooks drives home why attention must be paid to people like Virginia, if we ever hope to grow together rather than continually fencing ourselves apart.

“Native Gardens” continues through July 2 at Victory Gardens Theater, 2433 N. Lincoln Ave. in Chicago. For more information, visit victorygardens.org/. Read more about this production at TapMilwaukee.com.